Habitual skeptic

Category Archives: Business

Continuing on part 1 and part 2 in our series on intellectual property, today we look at why the social value of patents is greatly overestimated.

Patents not necessary for innovation

Most patents are not litigated. That would be insanely expensive. What ends up is a policy of mutually-assured destruction, where big companies build up patent portfolios as a defensive measure. But this could be accomplished with a voluntarist patent system, where you lose protection of your patents, if you violate anyone else’s.

Most intellectual property is not patented. It is squirrelled away as trade secrets. It lies in the particular operations and tradecraft of millions of businesses. That means most of the innovative power of the economy is not dependent on the government-run patent system. Then we have to question whether the patent system itself is necessary.

Huge costs of patents

The supposed benefits of patents to innovators are the justification for the system. But the costs to innovators and startup businesses are overlooked.

Patent trolls build up massive patent portfolios and litigate against any startup in a particular field, even without merit, as the cost of defending is extremely high. This creates huge uncertainty in entrepreneurship and requires a lot of capital to start up. It is another example of government-mandated capital concentration.

Innovators are more likely to get hammered by a lawsuit, than to benefit from a patent that takes millions to grant and to defend. This means patents are not necessary for innovation and they actively discourage it. This obviates the very reason patents were created in the first place.

The costs greatly outweigh the benefits of the current patent system. And it certainly is not any better than a voluntarist system, that does not rely on violence for enforcement, but only mutal respect of participants’ intellectual property.

Money is a dirty word in the liberty movement. Ironic, for a pro-free-market and free trade ideology. But when theory becomes reality, many recoil at the idea of bloggers doing sales or advertising. Why?

Spending time to make content or technology means taking time away from other activities, whether business or leisure. That time has to be compensated. Yet some act like entitled socialists, expecting this work to be provided for free!

To be fair, some monetization strategies are obnoxious or spammy. But all that means is we need better monetization options. Better technologies. Better feedback and suggestion from audiences of what works and what doesn’t.

For the liberty movement to survive, much less thrive and change the world, it must be economically self-sufficient. If you can’t feed yourself, you can’t change the world. If our activities in pursuit of liberty are not profitable, but only financial drains, we will never grow and advance.

We need more business models around advancing liberty. We need more content, more media platforms, more technologies. With the fake news media collapsing before our eyes, there has never been a better opportunity than now. There is so much pent up demand and very little supply.

We need more liberty entrepreneurs.

Not just from an economic perspective, but from a psychological one as well. It can get depressing focusing only on what the poweful are doing to us. Who wants to be on a constantly losing team, with a victim mentality? It’s time we recognize our own power, take responsibility, and become agents of change.

I am working on several media technology projects with a group of liberty-minded developers and creators. Want to join the effort? Email me at apollo at apolloslater dot com and let’s get to work!